PITTSBURGHCarnegie Mellon University will award its $50,000 Dickson Prize in Science to Alexander Pines, a professor of chemistry at the University of California at Berkeley, for his contributions to the field of nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR).

The late Pittsburgh physician Joseph Z. Dickson and his wife, Agnes Fisher Dickson, established the Dickson Prize in Science in 1969. Carnegie Mellon awards it annually to individuals in the United States who make outstanding contributions to science. The Dickson Prize also includes a medal.

As part of this award, Pines will deliver the Dickson Prize in Science lecture, "Some Magnetic Moments," at 4:30 p.m. on Wednesday, April 11 in the Mellon Institute Auditorium, second floor, Mellon Institute, 4400 Fifth Ave., Oakland. Pines' lecture will detail advances in the field of NMR and provide examples of novel methods of doing magnetic resonance spectroscopy and imaging. The lecture is free and open to the public.

At Berkeley, Pines is the Glenn T. Seaborg professor of chemistry and chancellor's research professor. He also is a faculty senior scientist at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.

Pines' techniques are widely used in chemistry and materials science. His awards include the Wolf Prize in Chemistry, the Pittsburgh Spectroscopy Award and the Bourke Medal of the Royal Society of Chemistry. Pines is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and past president of the International Society of Magnetic Resonance.

Pines studied mathematics and chemistry in Israel and obtained his Ph.D. in chemical physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He joined the Berkeley faculty in 1972.